Exploration

In all the head-pounding over learning XSLT last week, I let some things slide by without comment, so I’ll try to cover them all in a single post. (And remember, if you have an RSS aggregator, you can syndicate these posts via my RSS feed!)

I’ve added more information to the upcoming events on my Speaking page, including promotional codes for events that have them. I disclose when using a code will make me money, and have been thinking about ways to turn those into community-building exercises. Maybe I’ll take everyone who used my code(s) to a group dinner, assuming I can come up with a way to verify code use.

Over the weekend, I not only dug into more XSLT (which almost made me pound my head against a wall, again), but I wrote some Javascript bookmarklets to help manage the administration of css-discuss. It’s been a while since I thought of myself as a programmer, and I certainly am no expert—but it’s been good to stretch those mental muscles again, after so long. The neural paths needed for exploring and using CSS and structural markup aren’t the same as those needed for programming. The sense of achievement I felt when I figured out how to do what I wanted to do was a welcome change of pace.

It’s really cold in our house right now, but at least the shaking and banging of workmen dismantling our 82-year-old boiler has stopped. Kat and I are sort of sad to see the old beast go, but since it had suddenly started leaking enough carbon monoxide to form its own atmospheric system, we don’t exactly regret replacing it. The replacement boiler is almost ridiculously smaller than our old boiler. I have trouble believing that it can heat the basement, let alone the whole house.